Charon (11 page)

 
We were all silent now, raptiy intent on the speaker. Here was the heart of the Charon experience—what we would become.

 
"As on Lilith, we have a certain power over objects and people," Tiliar jumped in, taking up the talk. "As on Cerberus, it is a mental ability rather than a physical one, and mind-to-mind contact is possible. As on Medusa, physical change is possible, but in a different sense.
And, while these powers are
not
arbitrary—that is, everyone has these abilities—it .takes great training and discipline to be able to use them properly, while those with the training and control
can
use them on you.
That's why we cautioned you to avoid the locals for a while." She paused for a moment, carefully considering her words.

 
"You see," she continued after a moment, "Charon is a world out of children's stories and fairy tales. It is a world where magic works, where sores—sorcerers and their spells have devastating effects. And yet it is a world where none of the laws of science are violated."

 
This was a hard concept to digest, and several of our company muttered and shook their heads.

 
"I know, I know, it's hard to accept," Garal said after a while, "but the more hardheaded of you will quickly grasp the reality. Let me ask you first how you know you're here. How do you know this place looks like this place, that you look like you and we like us? How do you know it's raining?"

 
"We got wet," somebody mumbled, and we all laughed.

 
"All right, but how do you
know
you got wet? You— your
personality, your memories, the thinking part of you—are
really all locked up in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex. Your brain is the only real
you
that you know—and the brain is totally encased in your skull. It has no way of directly knowing what's going on at all—
it
doesn't even have pain centers. Every single thing you know comes to you, your brain, by remote sensors.
Vision.
Smell.
Taste.
Touch.
Sound.
The five senses. Each transmits information to the brain, and supports the others to tell the brain what's going on.
But what if those five senses were wrong.
There are methods of torture—and a lot of psych work, which may be the same thing—that capitalize on this.
Sending you false information.
There is, in fact, an ancient human religion called voodoo—that might explain it"

 
"A practitioner of voodoo," Tiliar explained, picking up the lecture, "took samples of your fingernails, hair, even shit, and put it on a doll. Then whatever that magician-priest did to the doll was supposed to happen to you. And why has voodoo really survived the space age?
Because it works."

 
"Aw, c'mon," the big man scoffed.

 
She nodded seriously. "Yes
,^
it works. But only
under
two conditions. First, the intended victim must believe that the priest has this power. It doesn't even have to be strong belief, just a subconscious fear that maybe it
does
work. And second, the intended victim must be made aware that he or she is being hexed. People have been crippled, physically and mentally, and even killed by this method, as long as those two conditions are met. And it's easier than you think. Even the most rational-minded have, deep down, a streak of superstition or doubt about unknown powers. The voodoo priests are master psychs, and every visible success reinforces the belief in their powers among others."

 
"Of course the priest doesn't really
do
anything," Garal noted. "They just establish the psychological conditions and you do it to yourself. In a sense, you might say that voodoo is a magic force that violates no known scientific laws."

 
"You mean this is a voodoo world?" I asked jokingly.

 
They did not think me at all funny. "In a sense, yes," the man replied. "But here you can eliminate the variables completely and go a lot further. If you'll remember, I said that the Warden organisms can communicate, so to speak, with one another, even outside the body they inhabit. But it's a passive thing. They communicate, but they don't actually
say
anything. But, because they are a part of you, they can talk to you as well—and you to them. That's the trick. How well you can master communication between your own Wardens and others. In a sense, Charon is the ultimate voodoo world where belief and preparation are not really necessary."

 
Tiliar thought a moment. "Look, let's put it this way. Suppose some powerful person decided to turn you into
a
uhar—one of those big blue things that pulled the coaches. If he has the power, the training, and the self-control, he contacts the Wardens in your mind through
his
Wardens. He sends out a message—you are
a
uhar. Not being trained, or not possessing the mental control needed, or any combination of these things, you have no defense, no way to tell your
own
Wardens that they are receiving false data. So this idea, that you are
a
uhar, gets pounded into your brain, much like a forced hypnoprobe. Your senses are fooled, all the information coming into the brain now confirms that you are a four-meter-tall blue lizard—and, from
your point
of view, you
are."

 
I saw Zala shiver slightly and felt some perspective was needed. "So all we are dealing with is a powerful form of hypnotism, the same kind we can achieve with machines, only we've dispensed with them to make the contact mind to mind."

 
"Sort of," Tiliar agreed. "But it doesn't stop there. Remember, your Wardens are in constant communication with all the other Wardens. Your own perceptions and self-image are 'broadcasting,' so to speak, to everyone else. What this means is that if
you
think you're
a
uhar, well then, so wfll everybody else. Even uhar win perceive you as uhar, since they, too, are Warden affiliated.
Every single thing will act as if the command, or spell, is real.
And since we depend on our senses for all our information, what we and everybody else perceive as real
will
be real. The more training and self-control you have in this ability, the more protected
you
will be and the more vulnerable everyone else will be. It's that simple."

 
"Needless to say, the better you are at it, the higher you will rise in Charon society," Garal added.

 
Tm not sure any of us really believed what we were being told, but we kept an open mind as it was information on how the place operated. Before I believed in any magic though, I'd have to see it demonstrated
myself
.

 
If this ability took training, it was worth going after. "Just how do we get the training needed to develop this?" I asked our hosts.

 
"Maybe you do, maybe you don't," Garal replied. "First of all, there's that self-control, a certain mental ability and attitude-set that you just can't teach. The fact is, most people can't handle the discipline involved, or can only handle it to a degree. Needless to say, it's also not in the best interests of the powers-that-be for everyone to develop this ability, even
if
they could. It is this way all over. There are few wolves and many sheep, yet the wolf rules the sheep. There are masses of people, nearly countless people, in the Confederacy, yet their entire lives, from their genetic makeup to jobs, location, even how long they will live, are in the hands of a very few. Please don't expect Charon to be any different."

 
That we could all understand at least. There was a government here, a government headed by the worst kind of power-mad politicians and super-crooks, and they had to preside over a society that was at least five percent as crooked and nasty as they were, or the children and grandchildren of the same sort. Such a government would not willingly share any of its power, nor dare to make it easily available. Still, I
reflected,
my own self-discipline and mental training and abilities were engineered to be way above the norm, and what an Aeolia Matuze and lesser lights could do, I most certainly could do as well. And there was always somebody ready to beat the system. Unofficial training would be around someplace—if it could be found, and if its price could be met.

 
In a way I suspected this might be something of a test
We
had come to Charon with nothing but our wits; those who could secure the method and means for training and its protection and chance for upward mobility would do so. The rest would join the masses in the endless pool of eternal victims. That was, I felt sure, the challenge they were issuing us here.

 
Back in our room, Zala and I talked over what we'd been told the first day.

 
"Do you think it's-for real?" slie wanted to know. "Magic, hexes, voodoo—it all sounds so ridiculous!"

 
"Ridiculous perhaps, when put in that context, but that's the context of science. Look, they're not saying that anybody on Charon can do anything that a good psych with a battery of mechanical devices couldn't do. Believe me, I
know."
And I
did
know—but not from being on the wrong end of them as she believed.

 
"Yes, but that's with machines and experts . . ."

 
"Machines, yes," I agreed, "but don't kid yourself that the experts are any less expert here than back there. There are even psychs sent here—they're the most imaginative people you can find, but they go out of their heads more often than those in any other job. No, the only difference here is that everybody^ carrying his own psych machine around inside of
him
—an organic machine, but still a gadget, a device."

 
She shivered. "What's wrong?" I asked her.

 
"Well, it's what you said. Psychs are the people most likely to go nuts, right? I guess it's because they not only get involved in hundreds of messed-up people's minds, but then: machines give them a god complex."

 
"That's pretty fair," I agreed.

 
"Well, what you just said is that we're on a world of psychs and
everybody
is under their machines and can't get disconnected. I mean, if a psych goes nuts back home, there are other psychs and computer monitors and all the rest to catch it, pull the plug, and get him out of you, right?"

 
I nodded.

 
"But, Park—who's the monitor here?
Who's around to pull the plug on these people?"

 
And that, of course, was the real problem. Loose in a Bedlam with the psychs crazier than the patients, and nobody to pull the plug—and no plug to be pulled. Nobody except . . . me.

 
It hadn't been a very trying day, but the release of tension added to the fact that none of us had gotten any real exercise for weeks, made it pretty easy to turn in fast. I had a little trouble figuring out how to extinguish the oil lamp in the room without burning myself, but I finally discovered the way the globe was latched. A tiny little cup on a long handle hanging next to the towel rack proved the easiest way to extinguish the light. It was not until days later that I found out that this was exactly what the little cuplike thing was for.

 
Despite my near exhaustion, I couldn't fall asleep right away. I kept thinking about Charon and the challenge it posed. Obviously I could do nothing until I was able to experience this pseudo-magic first hand and get a measure of what I was up against and what I had to learn. After that I'd have to get a job, I supposed, to develop some local contacts, to find out what I needed to know about training and rogue magicians. I would be totally ineffective until I had enough experience and expert instruction to hold my own on this crazy planet. It was entirely possible—likely, in fact—that the top politicians like Matuze weren't the top powers
in
magic here. I suspected the skills involved were quite different. But she would be flanked and guarded by the absolute tops, that was for sure; and the only way to her would be right through them. As a top agent, I had no doubt that I could eventually master the art enough to get by the best, but I was pragmatic enough not to think I could get through
all
of them single-handedly. No, I would need help—local help. The one thing I could be certain of was that a system like this would breed a whole raft of enemies for Matuze, and they'd all be either as criminal or as psychotic as they come—or both. The trick was to find them and organize them.

 
"Park?"
Her voice came to me in the darkness, through the sound of the omnipresent rain on the roof.

 
"Yes, Zala?"

 
"Can I ... would you mind if I got into your bed?
Just for a while?"

 
I grinned in the dark. "Not afraid I'll strangle you or something."

 
She got up and walked over, almost stumbling, and sat on the edge of my bed. "No, I don't think so. If I really ever thought so I wouldn't have stayed in here a minute." She crawled into bed with me and snuggled close. It felt good, oddly comforting, but also a little disconcerting. I wasn't used to women that much larger than I was. Well, I'd better get used to it.